On Monday, the Vatican said that gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy are grave threats to human dignity. They are on the same level as abortion and suicide when it comes to being against God's plan for human life. It took five years of work for the Vatican's teaching office to put out "Infinite Dignity," a 20-page statement. The AP reports that Pope Francis signed it on March 25 after making a lot of changes to it in the past few months.
In the most-anticipated part, the Vatican said again that it does not agree with "gender theory," which is the idea that a person can change their gender. It said that God made man and woman to be physically different and separate, and that they should not change that plan or try to "make oneself God." "It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception," it said.
It made a distinction between treatments that change a person's gender, which it did not support, and "genital abnormalities" that are present at birth or develop later. Health care experts can "fix" those problems.
There is a new stance that says surrogacy hurts both the surrogate mother and the child's honor. The Vatican is more concerned with the child than with the poor women who may be used as surrogates. They say, "The child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver."
Although it does not agree with gender theory, the text is very critical of countries, including many in Africa, that make homosexuality illegal. It repeated what Francis said in an interview with the AP in 2023: "being gay is not a crime." This statement is now part of the Vatican's teachings.
Transgender Christians called the statement "hurtful" right away and said it did not include the opinions or experiences of real trans people, especially when it talked about the difference between transgender people and intersex people.
"The suggestion that gender-affirming health care—which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities, and [God]—might risk or diminish trans peoples' dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant," said Mara Klein, a nonbinary transgender supporter.
In the most-anticipated part, the Vatican said again that it does not agree with "gender theory," which is the idea that a person can change their gender. It said that God made man and woman to be physically different and separate, and that they should not change that plan or try to "make oneself God." "It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception," it said.
It made a distinction between treatments that change a person's gender, which it did not support, and "genital abnormalities" that are present at birth or develop later. Health care experts can "fix" those problems.
There is a new stance that says surrogacy hurts both the surrogate mother and the child's honor. The Vatican is more concerned with the child than with the poor women who may be used as surrogates. They say, "The child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver."
Although it does not agree with gender theory, the text is very critical of countries, including many in Africa, that make homosexuality illegal. It repeated what Francis said in an interview with the AP in 2023: "being gay is not a crime." This statement is now part of the Vatican's teachings.
Transgender Christians called the statement "hurtful" right away and said it did not include the opinions or experiences of real trans people, especially when it talked about the difference between transgender people and intersex people.
"The suggestion that gender-affirming health care—which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities, and [God]—might risk or diminish trans peoples' dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant," said Mara Klein, a nonbinary transgender supporter.
